Getting My Hands on My Inheritance!

“Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

In a quiet corner of an organic cafe somewhere in Brisbane yesterday, history was made.

My mother (that’s her hands in the top of the picture above – like me she’s quite camera shy!) finally lent me the precious Family Recipe Book. Several times she stated in front of my sister and I (quite loudly I might add…) that it was only a loan, to facilitate the idea she had for a post for my blog based upon the comfort to be had by making and eating slices.

And in the grandest of gestures she actually let me take the tatty old exercise book – stuffed full of hand-written recipes, magazine clippings and scribblings on the backs of envelopes – home to the farm with me so that I may transcribe the wisdoms within its pages into a book of my own.

I was made to promise, PROMISE, that I wouldn’t share some of the most secret recipes with you, my Bloggerverse friends. And I wouldn’t, Mum, honest. Not with my grandmother peering down from Heaven in her imperious way. Goodness, some things – like the Heavenly Tart Recipe – are sacred.

But I am excited. There is so much good stuff between the pages of this book that I’ve grown up with and added to over the past few decades. My family history, and my inheritance, is the stories and recipes and memories contained here.

I look forward to sharing some of my family’s legacy with you. And I’ll start later this week with a post dedicated to Slices, for my Mum, whose idea it was. Just so we are clear about that…

Like this:

Hi! I'm Nicole Cody. I am a writer, psychic, metaphysical teacher and organic farmer. I love to read, cook, walk on the beach, dance in the rain and grow things. Sometimes, to entertain my cows, I dance in my gumboots. Gumboot dancing is very under-rated.

How fantastic that she actually let you take it home! My mom has a spiral notebook too that she snatched out of my hands when I said that I wanted to copy out some recipes. Gave me a papercut! What a mom!

But I know how it goes when it comes to family secrets. Whenever my mom gives me one of her recipes, she inevitably leaves something out, or gives me the wrong proportions!

Haha sounds like my mum. She recently gave me the precious pineapple pickles recipe of which I promptly made and gave hars to my good friends. They lived them them! Best pickles ever etc of which I told mum. She quickly responded with “well I hope you told them it was your mothers recipe and that you are lucky to have such a wonderful mother”! Lol! Of course I did mum!

Nicole this morning’s blog entry certainly made me smile. When my dear mum passed away nearly 23 years ago I was the only one in the family who wanted her old recipe folder (and the photos). Some of the entries in the folder are typed, some handwritten by my mother and her mother before her and some are cuttings from newspapers. At the back of the book my darling mum listed every address she had lived during the course of her life (and she and my dad moved quite a bit). The recipe most treasured is her ‘self saucing chocolate pudding’ which the whole family loved however when I tried to make it last year I got the conversions all wrong and it just wasn’t the same, or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be the same. I love this book and it is my dearest inheritance from my mother.

Chris, I completely understand how much that book means to you. In ours are treasured recipes written in my grandmother’s hand, and from friends long departed. It links us to them and those happy times forever. Irreplaceable! xx

I admit to having a few vintage cookbooks I’ve picked up from op shops and vintage fairs – better they are loved at my house than in the trash! And family recipes ARE an important heritage, in my opinion anyway, and it looks like yours too Wolf Mama. Thanks for stopping by xx